Passchendaele Exhibition – NZ Herald

The New Zealand Herald visited our temporary Passchendaele exhibition this morning, and captured the essence of the exhibition on video. Camera man Matt Mitchell talks with Steve La Hood, Director Story Inc. who spearheaded the team of companies that created the exhibition.

Steve says, “We explore the darker side of the war, less commemoration and more explanation of what really did go on. All of the dialogue you hear is verbatim. This is what people said, wrote or spoke about after the war.”

Quotes from diaries and letters have been recorded so visitors can hear the ‘voices’ of Passchndaele’s soldiers as glimpses of the battle flash across four screens.

Passchendaele – New Zealand’s Darkest Day is a new temporary exhibition about Kiwis’ experiences in the battle. The great grandson of one soldier describes the battle as “probably one of the most extreme human experiences one could ever imagine”.

Jack Gradwell has loaned his great grandfather’s bayonet and camera to the exhibition as a way of creating a more personal connection for visitors.